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Truckenbrodt gives advice on writing linguistics papers

September 9th, 2004 | Semantics

Hubert Truckenbrodt. “What you should know about writing academic papers in linguistics”. SfS Tübingen, 2004.

Excerpt:

American-style (caricature) Right after the introduction, the author makes it clear, what the claim of the paper is. “In this paper, I present a solution to the old puzzle why eggs play no role in the reproduction of whales. I will show that whales lay eggs, which dissolve in salt water about one minute after they were laid. And that is the reason eggs are not used for reproduction with whales. …” After that, the arguments for the claim are presented, if possible comparing the new theory with earlier claims. State the strong arguments that you have. After that, conclusion, and shut up. You say what you have to say, and that’s that.

Traditional German-style (caricature) Did the Ancient Greeks have something to say about the topic? What has been written about it since? Extra credit if you find someone who has commented on it a few centuries ago, and has since been overlooked. From there, the author builds up slowly and steadily. After about half of the paper, the specific question of the paper comes into view. First in a vague, general way, then somewhat more concretely. One starts to suspect that there may also be a claim made later on. A preference of the author becomes noticeable. At some point, however, the paper ends. Sorry, we are out of space. More next time.

1 comment so far ↓

#1 Tony Marmo on 09.09.04 at 8:32 pm

The German style he refers to is the basic traditional format in most Countries of Europe and Latin American, at least in the initial part. So it is not something specific of Germany, although nowadays the current voice in South America is that one should favour the diversity of styles.

There is also the Dutch Style caricature:

Option 1: start your paper with the empirical description of a certain aspect of one language (preferably English, Dutch is the second choice), then add more data all thru the paper. Do not bother much about what you have to say about the data, just add more. If possible, insert a state of the art section quoting mostly your Dutch colleagues or your colleagues who work in the Netherlands (do not give much credit to the most famous foreign linguists). Then, as in the German style described above, at certain point the paper ends. You do not know why, but it ends there.
Option 2: This option, less popular in the Netherlands than option 1. You pick up one claim from a certain famous non-Dutch linguist out of the theoretic context and say that you will show that the converse is true. A claim like this is usually in the format x is impossible and you will claim that x is possible and that you will show how. Then, you do not show how, you just present data and more data. You may suggest that such data suggest that other data should be analysed in another fashion. But do not go into theoretic details, please. End your paper with more data and claim that you have shown how x is possible. The idea is that everything is possible and we are happier without theoretic constraints on our fieldwork.

In either case it is also nice to insert a summary of the ideas as a final sub-section of the second, the third or the fourth section. The Dutch belief is that a summary in the middle of a paper helps much more than in the end or in the start. And, by the way, in your footnotes more data.

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